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Continuing its efforts to enhance the relationships among the top bodies within the United Nations on challenging international issues, the UN Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) today provided the Security Council an update on work underway to assist African countries emerging from conflict.

Continuing its campaign against the epidemic of diet-related chronic disease, the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) today highlighted a new review from South Africa confirming that high consumption of added sugars contributes significantly to the incidence of tooth decay and obesity.

The United Nations environmental agency has sent an emergency response specialist to Pakistan to help authorities there assess damage from the break-up of an oil tanker amid fears that stormy weather could spread spilled oil to ecologically fragile mangrove forests and turtle nesting beaches along the Arabian Sea coast.

The new top United Nations envoy for Kosovo, Harri Holkeri, today visited Mitrovica, a flashpoint of tension between ethnic Albanians and Serbs over the past two years, urging the people to break the cycle of violence and seek reconciliation and underlining his own commitment to bring the communities closer.

Declaring that efficient transit transport systems for landlocked developing countries are vital for their integration into the world economy, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan today called on both landlocked and transit developing countries to forge strong partnerships to ease market access.

Praising the role of a major international workers' union in promoting his Global Compact, United Nations Secretary-General Kofi Annan called today for even greater involvement by world labour in the initiative, which seeks to advance good corporate citizenship and responsible globalization from both labour and business.

With memorial candles, flowers, a public church service and a private burial, the world bade farewell to Sergio Vieira de Mello today, nine days after the top United Nations envoy in Iraq and High Commissioner for Human Rights was killed by a terrorist's bomb in Baghdad.

The top United Nations envoy in Afghanistan today opened a workshop organized by the UN Children's Fund (UNICEF) on the demobilization and reintegration of former child soldiers in the war-torn country.

A separate prosecutor's post was created today for the United Nations war crimes tribunal for Rwanda after the Security Council decided to split the prosecutorial duties of the two UN courts trying cases stemming from the 1994 Rwanda genocide and the Balkan wars of the 1990s, with Secretary-General Kofi Annan nominating a Gambian jurist to the new position.

Continuing his tour of West Africa to help bolster Liberia's peace process, the top United Nations envoy for the war-torn country is in Côte d'Ivoire today to discuss the possibility of opening up humanitarian corridors so that desperately needed food, clean water and medicines are readily available.